History
The idea of the TGV was first proposed in the 1960s, after Japan had begun construction of the Shinkansen (also known as the bullet train) in 1959. At the time the French government favoured new technology, exploring the production of hovercraft and the Aérotrain air-cushion vehicle. Simultaneously, SNCF began researching high speed trains that would operate on conventional tracks. In 1976, the government agreed to fund the first line. By the mid-1990s, the trains were so popular that SNCF president Louis Gallois declared TGV "The train that saved French railways".
Read more about this topic: High-speed Rail In France
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)